


Beware What You Look For, For You May Find It

by Aliax



Category: A Land Fit for Heroes - Richard Morgan
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bittersweet, Chocolate Box Treat, Ghost Seethlaw, How real is what happens in the Grey Places, M/M, One last time together, Set between TCC and TDD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 17:02:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17666564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliax/pseuds/Aliax
Summary: Ringil never found Seethlaw when he looked for him in the Grey Places before going through the Dark Gate. After enduring Risgillen's revenge, he decides to try one last time. What he finds will threaten to break both his heart and his sanity.





	Beware What You Look For, For You May Find It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sasha_b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/gifts).



The raw, relentless, mindless compulsion to go back to the Grey Places, again and again, and _find Seethlaw_ , somewhere, somehow, quieted down after Ringil met Hjel. It didn’t quite disappear, but having someone else to go to, something else to look for in the margins, gave him a screen behind which he could hide that desperate wish. It lent him the strength to lie to himself about yet another thing, to ignore yet another ache in his past and his being.

But then Risgillen trapped him into that hell where he had to face, again and again, what was left of his old lover, and that pain and urge came back, as strong as ever. He now _knew_ what he had only hoped for before: that there _was_ something left of Seethlaw to be found, if only he could figure out where.

He tried to go back to ignoring all of it. He tried to drown the burning compulsion to see Seethlaw one last time in Hjel’s and Noyal’s arms. He welcomed the duties and expectations people - including himself - piled on him left and right, and tried to fill his time and his mind with all the matters he had to do and learn and manage, so that he would have neither the opportunity nor enough energy left to spend on the contemplation of _what if._

What if he tried again now? What if it turned out differently, now that he had apparently gone through the Dark Gate? What if there was _more_ of Seethlaw left somewhere out there than that pitiful, broken thing?

What if…?

It ate at him, day by day, tiny bite after tiny bite, until one night he was faced with the abyss of it, yawning wide in front of his mind’s eye, and the one question he’d always refused to formulate loomed, large and refusing to be ignored, until he had to put the words on it.

What if he stopped running, and just fucking faced it, once and for all?

And so, he did just that. He lay down on his bed, alone but for the Ravensfriend in its scabbard and harness held tight in his arms across his chest, and the dragon tooth dagger hidden up his sleeve. He closed his eyes, let himself drift, down and away, always further down and away, as he always did when he went looking for Hjel. But this time, it wasn’t Hjel or the _ikinri ‘ska_ he focused on. They weren’t the one thing, the one person, one face, one name, which filled his mind as the margins accepted him, took him, swallowed him…

And coughed him out suddenly, jaggedly, as always.

He recognised the smells and the sounds before he even opened his eyes. He was out in the marsh. There was no hint of a campfire or the sea, no laughter or music on the wind. There was only damp earth below him, wet grass around him, and that soft, almost inaudible, eternal whistling lament.

He propped himself up on his elbows, and his heart beat painfully in his chest when he saw them: the familiar, silent sentinels of the stone circle, standing guard over him while he pushed himself to his feet and wrapped the Ravensfriend’s harness across his shoulders. _Seethlaw..._

He looked around him, saw the tell-tale pale line of a road a few dozen yards away, started walking towards it. As they so often did, the monoliths first moved along with him, then flickered out of existence, for no reason he could determine. The paving on the path was, as always, smooth and well-worn with what must be thousands of years of use. He felt, almost painfully, like he was somehow coming home when he stepped onto it…

He shook himself, glanced both ways, searching for a sign as to which way to go. He didn’t find any; he shrugged, turned to his right, started walking. If there was a ghost for him to find somewhere around here, it would—

“Ringil?”

Even though he’d been expecting it, he still jumped when a voice he would recognise anywhere and forever, rose from behind him.

“What are you doing here?” it insisted, sounding surprised. “I told you I would be back soon.”

Ringil turned around, faced the apparition. A dwenda stood there, clad in leather-mail armour, hands and head bare, the pommel of his long-sword jutting over his shoulder - and it was Seethlaw. It was definitely Seethlaw. It was his eyes, so deep Ringil once again felt himself drowning into them. It was his eyebrows, slightly furrowed in confusion. It was his jutting cheekbones, his nose, his jaw and his chin, all the planes and curves of a face Ringil would have identified without the shadow of a doubt, whether by sight or by touch.

It wasn’t, however, his smile.

The smile on the long lips was unlike any Ringil had ever seen before - warm, welcoming, easy.

Happy.

Ringil’s heart fluttered, caught between exhilaration and despair. This was Seethlaw, but like every other ghost Ringil had ever met, it wasn’t _his_ Seethlaw. _Well, what else did you expect, really?_ He didn’t know. He’d never known. He’d never allowed himself to think of that. He’d just… hoped.

And now it was happening, finally, and he didn’t know what to do, what to say, because it was everything he’d dreamt of, and yet nothing at all like what he’d so desperately wanted.

Seethlaw frowned more deeply; the happy smile slid off. “Gil? Are you all right?” And then, in an instant, he was here, right here, crowding Ringil’s space, one cold hand on Ringil’s cheek, the other around his neck. Ringil shivered at the otherworldly touch. “Gil?”

The dark eyes were troubled now, the musical voice worried. Ringil swallowed, opened his mouth. He had no idea what he was going to say; he just knew he had to answer, somehow.

“You were dead.”

… Oh. _Wonderful._

Like every other ghost, Seethlaw protested. “What?” He was shocked of course, and more than a little confused, and very much concerned. “Gil, what’s wrong with you? Why are you here? Did something happen?”

_Yeah. You could say that._ “I—” The words scratched his throat as he pushed them out. “I needed to see you.”

“And it couldn’t wait until I got home?” Seethlaw sighed and shook his head. He seemed more weary than angry, though. “You could easily have missed me out there, you know.”

“Yeah…” _I missed you, all right._

“Gil, are you sick or something? You look terrible.”

_Like I’ve seen a ghost, you mean?_ Ringil let Seethlaw take his hand and guide him to a patch of dry grass on the side of the old, deserted road they were standing on. They sat down, legs crossed, facing each other. Seethlaw was still loosely holding Ringil’s fingers between his own cold ones, in a way that spoke of an intimacy they had never had time to develop in reality.

“All right, so what’s going on? Did something happen?”

_I killed you. You’re dead._ That was what Ringil should say. He shouldn’t play along with this fraud; that way lay only madness, he knew it. If he listened to this illusion of Seethlaw, he would forget what was true and what was false. He would lose his grip on his sanity. He would…

And sure enough, there they were coming, the images and sounds, the memories of a life he’d never lived, tumbling into each other behind the screen of his closing eyes.

Walking down wide pale-paved streets, in a city unlike any he’d ever seen, with Seethlaw by his side. Buildings so tall they made him dizzy just staring up at them. Trees made of light, like the bridge in Ennishmin, singing in the gentle wind.

And people, so many people! Humans and dwenda alike, who called out to them, smiled at them, bowed to them - and oh look over there, even Egar and Archeth, discussing animatedly with two of the dwenda Ringil had met and killed back in Ennishmin. A half-Kiriath, standing freely and peacefully among the Aldrain... In what world could such a thing ever happen!?

His heart jumped as another voice called after them, and they turned around to face a grinning newcomer - and if the happy smile on the face of Seethlaw's ghost had looked wrong, then the one his sister was wearing was outright terrifying to Ringil's slipping hold on reality. Risgillen would _never_ look at him this way! She would _never_ be genuinely glad to see him!

She would never talk about matters Ringil didn't know about and yet understood perfectly - personal news about dear friends he’d never heard of, the steady progress of the reclaiming of the Wastes, the latest political treaties signed with the League and the Empire to ensure peace...

None of this was real, and Ringil knew it, but he let himself drown all the same into those memories of a time which had never happened.

He let himself remember that somewhere in that city, he had a home - _they_ had a home, together with Seethlaw. He contemplated the beautiful painting of his mother on the wall; she looked more radiant than the Ishil he'd left behind in the real Trelayne could ever hope to fake... A desk was laden with papers whose contents he knew without having to look at them. Sitting with Seethlaw at a table, he ate Aldrain food that melted in the mouth. He read books written in a language he didn’t know, and yet could decipher with Seethlaw's help, teaching him patiently, and laughing gently, without any mockery, when Ringil’s tongue faltered.

And now they were lying on a thick, Majak-style rug - an impossible gift from Egar to the both of them - in front of some kind of odd fireplace. Ringil was pulling Seethlaw close as they rested there at the end of a long day. They exchanged slow, unhurried kisses, the kind they’d never had time to have.

Then, without transition, fucking Seethlaw, sometimes lazily, sometimes desperately, in an actual bed - _their_ bed, in their bedroom, in their _home_ \- and always holding him tight afterwards as they fell asleep together, so perfectly contented and profoundly satisfied, with life and with each other.

Ringil couldn’t quite forget that none of this had ever happened, but he didn’t care. He _wanted_ this mirage to be true, wanted it more than he could ever remember wanting anything, wanted it with every inch of his body, every strand of his heart and mind, wanted it, _wanted it!_

He knew he shouldn’t, knew it would be cheating, but he did it anyway. He opened his eyes, leaned forward, slipped his fingers into the dwenda’s hair, pulled him into a kiss. Seethlaw came easily, with a smile and a little puff of laughter against Ringil’s lips, right before they met.

It was like nothing Ringil had ever experienced, but then he hadn’t expected it to be. The slick tongue was still the same, but it was so cold! Nor was there any of the spicy taste and smell Ringil still remembered so well - and despite the chill running down his spine from where the ghost that wasn’t Seethlaw was leeching all heat out of his mouth, it was the absence of that precious, peculiar smell which hurt the most. Gods, how it hurt, as if it were a piece of Ringil’s very flesh which had been taken away!

The gentleness this Seethlaw exhibited when he laid Ringil down on his back was another thing which did not belong to the dwenda Ringil had once known, but he didn’t let that stop him. Instead, he pulled on the false memories crowding his head, of the many, many times this Seethlaw had done just that, slowly, playfully, with none of the impatience which had characterised their early fucks - their _only_ fucks, his sanity screamed weakly in the back of his mind, but no! He didn’t want to remember that. So he pushed it away, denied it, ignored it.

His clothes easily came off or fell open under Seethlaw’s agile fingers. The touch of the ghostly hands on Ringil’s bare skin made him shiver, but that too he wilfully dismissed, and soon he didn’t mind it anymore, barely could notice it even, over the heat of the fire that Seethlaw was so skillfully awakening in his belly. Kisses down Ringil’s throat, nips in places Ringil hadn’t even known would make him moan and writhe. The icy lips closing over a nipple, an edge of teeth, the wicked tongue flicking over - and in Ringil’s head, memories of his heart turning over and over again as Seethlaw learnt how to do this just right over time, time they’d never had, time they had now.

The dwenda’s lithe body felt just like any other ghost body to Ringil’s touch, but he told himself it was different, and soon enough, he believed it. How could he not, when his fingers so easily recognised under the cold, bare skin, patterns of muscles and bones and tendons he’d never had enough opportunities to properly map out? When they knew exactly how and where to hold Seethlaw to make him shiver and swear softly? When they knew to cup the hard buttocks just like _this_ , and to push one, then two fingers in-between them, and Seethlaw would shake, his breath would decay… Ringil had never done this a hundred times before.

There was an urgency to the dwenda’s moves now, as he slid down Ringil’s body, and wrapped his mouth around his hard prick. Not even the cold of that ghostly mouth could shrivel Ringil’s burning erection, not when he knew, even though he shouldn’t, even though he _couldn’t_ , that it would be nothing more than a perfunctory job, meant only to provide lubrication. He knew Seethlaw would then rise over him, so beautiful in his open need for Ringil that Ringil’s heart would break all over again as it always never did. Seethlaw would lower himself again, hissing softly between his teeth, dark eyes briefly shutting close, as he pushed himself all the way down in one long glide, and a sob would rise out of Ringil’s throat, out of pleasure, and out of emotions he couldn’t afford to name - not in this life, not in this body.

Ringil’s hands were on the ghost’s thighs, as much at home there as they would have been around his own prick. He could feel the heat leaking from his palms, could feel his fingers growing numb, but none of it mattered. Even when his cock found itself enclosed in a touch both so familiar and so alien, silky soft and tight as always, but colder than the dwenda’s cool skin had ever been, he still didn’t care. Let him freeze to death, if that was the price to pay to have Seethlaw one last time!

Surviving didn’t matter. Going back to his real life in the real world didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not in the face of the memories of years he’d never spent with Seethlaw, of a peaceful life they’d never carved together for themselves and for everyone who mattered to them, of days full of open affection and nights filled with heated passion they’d never shared.

All that mattered were the too-warm memories, and the too-cold ghostly body riding him, which was Seethlaw in every way that counted. It was his voice; it was his face with the deep dark eyes Ringil wanted to lose himself in forever. It was his hard, lithe body with the thin limbs, the narrow hips, the large, powerful shoulders - and the huge prick, already leaking over Ringil’s lower belly, and around which Ringil wrapped a hand, knowing exactly, from decades of experience, just how to hold it right for Seethlaw to fuck into it as he moved.

It was Seethlaw, Seethlaw found again, after so long, _finally!_

Ringil watched, desperately drinking in every detail like a dying man finding a well in the middle of the Demlarashan desert, as Seethlaw drove them both to orgasm. He registered every grunt, every pumping move of the tight ass, every shadow of the muscles bunching under the white skin, every slide of the hard, velvet-soft cock in his hand, and also every glimmer in those eyes, every gasp out of those lips…

He knew, dimly, that should he live a hundred years, he would never see anything as beautiful as the line of Seethlaw’s throat when the dwenda threw his head back, and let out a howl as he came in ice-cold spurts all over Ringil’s stomach and chest and fingers.

He felt tears of unspeakable grief rise to his eyes as he clamped his hands around Seethlaw’s shaking hips, kept him firmly impaled on his prick, and in his turn emptied his balls deep inside the dwenda’s still trembling body.

They stayed that way a long moment, panting, shivering, riding the last waves of their pleasure - and staring into each other’s eyes, and smiling. _Smiling._ Smiling like they always did, like they'd never done.

Then, as always and never again, Seethlaw carefully pulled himself off Ringil’s softened cock, and stretched down next to him. Ringil’s body had never been through this, and yet it knew exactly how to position itself, knew exactly how they liked to fit together, legs entangled, face to face, hands on each other's neck or chest or jaw, close enough for either of them to reach forward and lay a stray kiss on the other’s nose or lips if they felt like it. They didn’t talk; they always never did. They didn’t need to. Ringil knew what every curve of Seethlaw’s mouth and eyebrows meant, every look in his eyes. He had learnt to read the dwenda like an open book over the many years they had never shared.

He knew happiness when he saw it on Seethlaw’s face, and that was what he was seeing now, and his heart and his soul broke, shouting themselves hoarse as they reminded him that this was only what _could_ be have been, this was gloriously what _might_ have been - _if only!_

When the pitch eyes closed, and the dwenda’s breathing slowed down, it took every last scrap of willpower in Ringil’s being to stop himself from shaking Seethlaw awake again. _Stay with me… Don’t leave me again. Please!_

Instead, he closed his eyes as well, pulled Seethlaw as close as he could, and let new icy tears fall, quietly. He couldn’t even register the cold of Seethlaw’s body anymore, was only dimly aware of how chilled he himself was increasingly feeling, and how it should concern him. But… If anything, as sleep settled over him, he found himself wishing that the cold might take him away forever, that he might never wake up, never have to live another day or night - not without Seethlaw.

*

He did wake up, of course.

He was back in the real world, half-naked on his bed - and utterly alone. Even the memories of the life he had never shared with Seethlaw were mostly gone. Already, they were barely more than fleeing dreams.

Instead, he was left with the bliss of having had again, and the agony of having lost again.

He pulled the covers tight around him. His hand settled on his bare and clean stomach, exactly where his skin still remembered the shock of receiving the icy splash of seed of a Seethlaw who had never truly been his.

He let the pain of this acknowledgement wash through him. He didn’t fight it this time, didn’t push it back. He could try to deny it, as he’d denied so many other things over the years, but he didn’t. Instead, he gathered it close to his heart, and fashioned it into a new hope, a bitter wish: that now, maybe, finally, he was going to be able to let the ghost of the man he had killed rest in peace, both figuratively and literally.

***


End file.
